Livio Felluga’s winery is an historical producer in Friuli Venezia Giulia, a region in the North-Eastern corner of Italy renowned for producing some of the world’s finest white wines. With more than 150 vineyard hectares distributed in two DOC areas (Collio and Colli Orientali del Friuli), it represents one of the most important producer in the region.

Farm Manager is Mr. Daniele Cocetta, who installed his first iMetos station back in 1999. Since that station (with on-site data download) he says, Pessl Instruments technology has constantly evolved, leading to more and more precise and reliable stations, with the possibility to download data directly on your desk, thanks to GPRS data transmission.
We introduced our first station, convinced that a punctual monitoring of major agro-environmental parameters would lead to a better decision process on when and how to spray pesticides, and convinced that this process would have resulted in a rationalisation of plant protection and a reduction of environmental impact.
In this perspective, an additional tool is represented by disease forecast models and meteo forecast which allow, the definition of the best plant protection strategy in the earlier and most delicate phases of vine growth.
In our view, key parameters to be monitored are rain and leaf wetness, which, together with meteo forecast, support me in deciding which is the best active ingredient in that specific timing and allow for a correct positioning of the spray.
Since 1999, station have increased to 6 units, some of which equipped with soil moisture sensors. The introduction of this additional monitoring, continues Cocetta, is crucial to determine the exact irrigation schedule and to get a quick feedback on soil mosture status.
Today, the installed station allow monitoring of the different micro-climatic areas which are present in the estate as a slight difference in positioning of the station will result in clearly different readings of key parameters (temperature, relative humidity and leaf wetness).
Future foresees an even higher use of stations as the winery is planning to switch to organic farming, making use of monitoring and modelling more and more important.